**I promise this isn't the end, there's more Dean and Ben to come. I hope you enjoy.
-Penny**
What he'd felt after Laura left him felt shallow in comparison to the pain-coated emptiness inside him now. Nothing mattered anymore, Dean's cold dismissal broke something in him. Worst part was that he couldn't figure out where he'd gone wrong. Dean didn't call, didn't text, didn't do anything, and he just couldn't, not with the way Dean had dismissed him. He didn't know what he would've said anyway, couldn't put words to the suffocating pain.
The remainder of the weekend destroyed his heart, his confidence, and his will to do anything at all. Time passed in an indiscernible blur, nothing seemed to matter. It was overly dramatic, he knew it, but he couldn't stop feeling the intensity of his rejection.
By Sunday afternoon his cat had enough of him moping around the house, and had taken to walking all over him as he began to fuse with the couch. Just when she'd seem to get comfortable laying on his legs, she'd get up again, making sure to step on his balls with each foot as she climbed his body, then sat on his chest. She yowled in his face, her breath a terrible mixture of old fish and cat stink.
He pushed her off only to have the whole episode repeated. If he thought he'd tire her out, he was wrong. Six times later he realized she'd hold out longer than him. He got up and fed her as she twined impatiently between his feet. She really was trying to kill him.
Now that he was up he realized it was Sunday night. Not sure where the weekend went, and not really interested in remembering, he made the decision he wasn't going to work on Monday. He wasn't prepared to see Dean again, not this soon. He grabbed his phone from the closet where he'd hidden it from himself so he wouldn't send embarrassing texts. The screen was black, and his chest tightened with fear, had he broken it when he threw it earlier? No, he needed to calm down, the phone was probably just dead, he hadn't charged it since Friday on his drive to Dean's...
He forced himself to move, but it took him twenty minutes to work up the willpower to find a charger, and another ten staring at the blank screen before it was charged enough to turn on. His heart clenched, hoping, and dreading, a missed text from Dean.
There were no missed texts. No missed calls. No nothing. He texted his boss that he wasn't well, then threw his phone across the room and buried himself under layers of blankets, wallowing in his own misery. He knew eventually he'd have to clean himself up and go back to his life, but that was for Later-Ben to figure out. Now-Ben didn't give a shit about Later-Ben. Later-Ben could go to hell. Past-Ben had ruined everything, and Now-Ben was miserable.
Sunday night turned into Monday night, but Ben didn't pay enough attention to really care. It was maybe dinner time, as dictated by his feline, when his phone rang. He ignored it. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
He tried to sleep, but he wasn't tired. At some point, though, he must have dozed off, because he woke up in the wrong part of his sleep cycle, his heart pounding and his throat tight. He was sweaty from sleeping with too many blankets, and his bed was moist, and bore a funky, sweaty, three-day unshowered man stank. He forced himself to roll out of bed, then pulled everything off his bed in a fit of rage, throwing pillows across the room, tearing off the comforter and sheets in a fit of self-pity fueled rage.
It felt good for a second, but the feeling was fleeting. Disgust at himself quickly replaced it, and he suddenly needed a shower. He was in only long enough to wash the filth from his body, then threw on some sweatpants without underwear, because who cared, really? He pulled on a clean shirt, then frowned at his bed for its lack of bedding. His bed was such an asshole.
His phone rang again, and he instantly hated his ringtone, Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, though it was one of his favorite songs. He scowled at the disheveled, naked bed, then begrudgingly went to find his phone. It stopped ringing before he could answer it, buried somewhere beneath the mess of bedding. Eventually he found it and saw that he'd missed three calls, one from Dean, which made his heart hurt, but also gave him unfair, secret hope, and two from D'metrius Matthews, whoever that was.
As he held his phone, staring hard at Dean's name in his missed calls log, it vibrated. A text message from D'metrius Matthews. He opened the message. 'Answer your phone, straight-bait. Call me.'
Straight-bait? He ignored it, pocketing his phone, the weight of Dean's missed call heavy enough that he was considering calling off for Tuesday, too. His bed, even without bedding, was calling him.
He ended up on the floor, curled up in his foul-smelling, discarded blankets and sheets, suddenly feeling too empty to change his bedding and get back in bed. He wallowed until his phone rang yet another time, ruining the song even more. He only answered it to stop it from ringing, he hadn't looked to see who it was.
"H'llo?" he mumbled, his voice raspy from lack of use.
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Benjamin! You need to answer your phone when a Queen calls you," said a voice he failed to recognize, though it sounded familiar.
"Queen? What? I answered, didn't I? But, I think you have the wrong number, man." He tilted the phone to see who was calling. D'metrius Matthews again. "You definitely have the wrong number."
"Bitch please," the man said, and suddenly it fell into place. "You're Benjamin DeLuca, right?"
His brain suddenly caught up. "Zion?"
"Yes, Zion. I'm just D'metrius right now, though. Boy, you sound like hell."
"Ah, yeah." The only reason he didn't hang up was the connection to Dean through D'metrius, however thin it was.
"You sick?"
"Something like that," he agreed. "How do you have my number? Why are you calling me?"
"I have my ways," D'metrius said coyly. "Also, you should really put a lock screen on your phone."
"Dean said the same thing," he mumbled, sitting up. Thinking about Dean was painful, so he didn't. He put the phone on speaker, then rubbed his temples as a headache bloomed across his forehead, not completely sure why he didn't just hang up.
D'metrius laughed. "He would. It's good advice. You should follow it."
"Why'd you call me?" he asked, too unhappy to have any patience. "And text me? And call me again?"
"Princess said you didn't come to work today."
That was why he didn't hang up. Dean. "Why do you call Dean Princess? Does he crossdress too?" It wasn't what he wanted to ask. He couldn't ask what he wanted to ask.
D'metrius snorted. "I'm sorry, but I thought I just heard you ask if Dean crossdresses, too. Did I hear you right? Did I hear you say you think I'm a transvestite?"
Ben rubbed his eyes, then stretched his back. "You were wearing hot pants and a tube top. You have breasts. You weren't crossdressing?"
D'metrius sighed dramatically. "I will forgive you once, for you are yet but a pure vanilla boy. I am not a transvestite. I am a Queen. I dress spectacularly to entertain and impress, but I'm one hundred percent male. I don't wish I was a woman, I enjoy the power wearing women's clothes makes me feel. Hence, I'm a Queen. The breasts are fake, by the way."
"So Dean's a Queen, too, then?" he asked.
"Is that a bad thing, Benjamin?" D'metrius asked, the hint of threat in his tone.
He wanted to snap at him, but he wanted information about Dean more. "I just meant, is that why you call Dean Princess?"
D'metrius snorted. "We call him Princess because he refuses to do drag. I got him half dressed once, and he stormed out and locked himself in the bathroom until I promised not to ever do it again. So, he's not a Queen, just a Princess."
Ben chuckled. "Yeah, I can see him doing that. He probably had that squished up irritated face he gets, where he wrinkles his nose." He could see Dean doing it. He tried his best to keep his heart glazed over so he wouldn't start feeling the intensity of his rejection again. Would Dean ever look at him like that again? Probably not.
D'metrius chuckled, too, then sobered quickly. "No, straight-bait. You aren't gonna make me like you. You broke Dean, and I'm gonna find out how. Talk. Dean said you didn't come to work today."
"I didn't break... Fine, whatever." Ben closed up. "Yeah, I skipped."
"Why?"
He sighed. "What's it to you? Just leave me alone."
D'metrius was quiet for a breath. "Is that what you really want? Cause, I'm beginning to think that you're not actually sick."
His throat seized up. "Of course I'm sick," he squeaked, too late to sound anything but guilty as charged.
